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Since I had the day off, I decided to sit down and rewatch the whole series from the beginning. There are actually a ton of clues, but (A) they're limited to the first half of the series, and (B) they're so subtle that they're only obvious in retrospect.

Yeah... honestly a lot of those come from retrospect, and we as viewers understand more the logic and subtle details behind the events. But I still claim it was a stupid and meaningless trick. And honestly, having Ms. Mikami being the dead herself as a separate entity from Reiko would already be a crazy thing because no one would have guessed it would be a teacher and not a student in the first place. The fact that the author wanted to shoehorn the connection in to invoke more emotion is what aggravates me.

Quote:

During the beach trip, Sakakibara slips up and refers to her as Reiko in front of Mochizuki and Akazawa, and Reiko responds with an annoyed, "What?" after which Sakakibara apologizes.

I was just always under the assumption that everyone knew that Reiko = Ms. Mikami, but we as the viewers were left oblivious to that fact until the very end.

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I think it was, "I love my aunt, but I'm pretty sure I can get Misaki to put out if the curse ends."

Or rather, "if I end the curse, the chances that we'll both live long enough to have her put out is astronomically higher than if I don't."

No, while he did look akin to Kouichi, it wasn't him. It was just some random assailant.

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Originally Posted by maplehurry

Such a waste. Would've made a perfect twist to this story if he IS the one.

Tell me about it. I was absolutely certain that it was him (especially when they kept flashing back the "a year and a half ago" line as the memories are cascading through him) all the way up to the end, which sets up the situation for, once his memory of her fades, he'll remember that he killed her in reality, and, depending on how much he remembers of the incident at the lodge (he might forget this because it was so entwined in killing the Another), he'll then remember that Mei was a witness!

...but apparently that little plot thread has no basis in reality.

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Originally Posted by Kanon

There's one thing that bothered me and forgot to mention. Mei said Mikami was the only assistant homeroom teacher in the whole school, and yet nobody ever found that weird, apparently. That and the fact she was the homeroom teacher two years ago should have made her incredibly suspicious. I mean, really, it was just a matter of putting two and two together there. Is Mei incredibly smart or is it Izumi -who supposedly investigated a lot- who is not as bright as I thought?

Spoiler for Izumi:

...given that Izumi's actions in the final confrontation seemed to be screaming "YOU MUST BE THE DEAD ONE BECAUSE SAKAKIBARA LIKES YOU BETTER THAN ME!" I'm really not too overly impressed with her investigative skills. For that matter, Class 3 is already the weird class, so anything out of the ordinary might have been written off according to that. Mostly, though, it's a case of having to think outside the box to recognize that a teacher, not just a student, can be the Another. Outside-the-box thinking (while still adhering to the strict rules of the calamity) is not something that people in general are good at.

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When you think about it, there is an easy way to prevent more people from dying, at least for as long she lives: Mei. She's got a ghost radar so she can easily find the extra person and kill him. I kinda thought she would become a teacher in order to be able to fulfill that mission more easily, and that the series would end on a hot adult Mei -in a suit- entering class 3. She's got a great gift and has a responsibility to use it, in my opinion. She could save countless lives.

Or, more likely, a random beam would drop from the ceiling and crush her on April 1st. (Sorry, really not impressed with ep. 11/ first half of 12.) Actually, more on Mei below...

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Originally Posted by Kanon

They just needed to think outside the box. Mei did, why not the others? Chibiki of all people should have considered that possibility...

Ahh, so you said that already. I don't know, Chibiki seemed to be the one most leashed to the apparent rules of the story. I think Mei was the natural one to do so, because...(see below on Mei)

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He does not remember because he came to Yomiyama to attend Reiko's funeral. Erasing Reiko's death (the reason he was in Yomiyama) from his memory means erasing the whole trip.

Okay, I buy this. If he came there to attend the funeral (as is actually alluded to in his year-and-a-half-ago conversation with Izumi), then he couldn't have been the assailant 'cause he wasn't in town yet. I still wish that Unknown Assailant Guy hadn't looked exactly like him, though, to avoid creating that confusion.

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Originally Posted by serenade_beta

To be honest, it is all Mei's fault, since she knew who should have died in the first place, but by not telling, caused Akazawa-san and Sugiura-san to die. And some other people.
"It's not like it would make any difference..."
No nononono, when peoples' life is at stake (especially Akazawa-san and Sugiura-san), that is what you say after you try everything. Of course, the god of death is in love with her and she knows she won't die, so I'm sure it doesn't matter to her.

Spoiler for Mei speculation:

Truthfully...yeah. I honestly don't think Mei cares all that much about her classmates outside of Sakakibara. Even when she's no longer being ignored, she's distant and removed from them, and her "natural" personality (no doubt affected strongly by her family upbringing, but even so...) is very distant and unconnected with most people. Moreover, her sister died even before the calamity started, which is a major gut-punch, and since she was the ignored one she might well have been feeling some guilt over that if she screwed up somehow, and mostly, until they listened to the tape on the class trip, nobody knew that identifying the Another was in any way relevant to solving the problem (it was mentioned that merely ostracizing the another would do nothing?). And she was about to tell at the end of Ep. 10, but got cut off by Teshy busting into the room, and then all hell broke loose, and over and above that she didn't want Sakakibara to know it was someone he cared for and was going to go solve it herself (that's why she ran off on her own the first time, only to be hunted down by Izumi).

Plus, given that Sugiura and Izumi were trying to kill her (hell, Sugiura specifically tried to rally the entire class into a mob to kill her...and most of the class went along with it!) based on the fact that she was the creepy outsider girl (and that Sugiura had once gotten a glimpse of her twin), I wouldn't have been all that motivated to lift a finger to save their witch-hunting asses in the first place.

(Truthfully, a good half of this series seems to be playing as a scathing indictment of the follow-the-leader, fit-in-your-neat-little-role behavior common to school in general and Japanese school life in specific.)

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Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

For me, the last two eps lost some of the magic of the first 10 - they went for quantity of horror over quality of suspense. The whole thing with the chandelier and the pillar was just silly - it felt more like the finale of Blood-C than Another. Made me wonder if Mizushima-sensei had really recovered from that disaster (and was as blameless for it) as I thought.

Ditto. The random bloodbath parts did feel very much like Blood-C; they were so out of the blue it was like fate was smiting down everybody at random without rhyme or reason. The murder deaths and attempted murders were sufficient blood and often genuinely scary because they came out of the tragedy and desperation of the calamity; the environmental deaths (the guys getting toasted at the door of the dining hall to the chandelier/pillar set) could have easily been left out--and very probably should have been.

I will say, I knew that chandelier was going to fall the instant I saw it, though, since it's actually falling in the OP (though the lamps are all doll eyes in that image)!

^
I hope you remembered that from the start the director is the same guy who turned the last two episodes of Blood-C into a bloodbath. Expect a slow buildup at first, and then a sudden storm of violence and bloodshed in the final two episodes.

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Originally Posted by justsomeguy

Actually, glasses and braids lived. You can see her by Chibiki's car, so maybe he pulled her out.

Truthfully...yeah. I honestly don't think Mei cares all that much about her classmates outside of Sakakibara. Even when she's no longer being ignored, she's distant and removed from them, and her "natural" personality (no doubt affected strongly by her family upbringing, but even so...) is very distant and unconnected with most people. Moreover, her sister died even before the calamity started, which is a major gut-punch, and since she was the ignored one she might well have been feeling some guilt over that if she screwed up somehow, and mostly, until they listened to the tape on the class trip, nobody knew that identifying the Another was in any way relevant to solving the problem (it was mentioned that merely ostracizing the another would do nothing?). And she was about to tell at the end of Ep. 10, but got cut off by Teshy busting into the room, and then all hell broke loose, and over and above that she didn't want Sakakibara to know it was someone he cared for and was going to go solve it herself (that's why she ran off on her own the first time, only to be hunted down by Izumi).

Plus, given that Sugiura and Izumi were trying to kill her (hell, Sugiura specifically tried to rally the entire class into a mob to kill her...and most of the class went along with it!) based on the fact that she was the creepy outsider girl (and that Sugiura had once gotten a glimpse of her twin), I wouldn't have been all that motivated to lift a finger to save their witch-hunting asses in the first place.

(Truthfully, a good half of this series seems to be playing as a scathing indictment of the follow-the-leader, fit-in-your-neat-little-role behavior common to school in general and Japanese school life in specific.)

Spoiler for why spoiler tag?:

Yeah, I don't think she cared that much, but that is why I'm judging her for it. Because if she did care, then well, her (lack of) actions wouldn't have made sense.

And telling at the end of episode 10 was a bit too late. The moment you learned what you needed to do, you should have acted, fast. Would have saved the important characters (mainly Akazawa-san and Sugiura-san) and she herself as well as the protagonist would have suffered through less pain.
And it can be said that the witchhunt occurred in the first place because she didn't stop everything from reaching that point. From a God perspective, the fact she could have saved a whole bunch of lives but didn't even try deserves getting hunted down.

__________________

-Blog --> http://tdnshumi.blogspot.com/ (Mainly about video games)
-R.I.P. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Gaming wouldn't have been the same without you (9/19/13)

^
I hope you remembered that from the start the director is the same guy who turned the last two episodes of Blood-C into a bloodbath. Expect a slow buildup at first, and then a sudden storm of violence and bloodshed in the final two episodes.

Fixed. Thanks, I missed those three.

Spoiler for Revision 2:

*Plays The X-Files theme music.*

Yeah, except for Pillar, the chandelier didn't end up killing anybody. Shocking.

^
I hope you remembered that from the start the director is the same guy who turned the last two episodes of Blood-C into a bloodbath. Expect a slow buildup at first, and then a sudden storm of violence and bloodshed in the final two episodes.

With no prior knowledge of the above, I really enjoyed the first 7 episodes of the show. I'm a slow guy, so it really only became apparent to me at 10 that something was going horribly wrong with the direction of the finale. But of course I stuck with it just and hoped for the best.

I was even hopeful (but still very skeptical) after 11. I just didn't feel anything watching this last episode but dissapointment. I was really wanting to read the novel at some point if it was ever translated but that prospect has gone out the window now for me too.

The first half of the series seems to be in that genre of Japanese horror that is masterfully slow build and suspenseful. The "first" death really caught me off guard and drew me in. Then they just became so predictable and uninteresting.

Actually, I think one of the problems is that so many people ended up dying it completely desensitised me the viewer toward the whole basis behind the calamity. The impact of their deaths became nothing more than a guessing game as to who would be offed next. If it had been done so that only one or two major characters had died, it would have been more thrilling.

Similar is the example in Gurren Lagann. We all remember Kamina and Nia. Maybe even the Spiral King guy, but there were a lot of +1s in there that I sure can't name or even remember their faces.

Great potential in Another but I feel it was ultimately wasted by a weak followthrough. I will rate it higher than Blood C, which I deleted off my computer in pure disgust after watching the final episode.

I liked the whole show but I must admit that the last 2 episodes fell more like final destination with all the cheap deaths than the early episodes, specially the chandelier falling to the group of students and then the pillar crushing the other one, now I really find it funny how Sakikabara stood there in the middle of the fire just to call his girl and ask her if she was ok.

But overall it was a nice ride, I think this was the best show of the season but it could have been better =/

btw, I heard there was an ova and a sequel in the making, what do you think the story will be this time? due to so many students deaths and the lack of a teacher all the survivors must start the whole 9th year again? :P

The whole story just degenerates at the end to a disappointingly anticlimactic ending, since it turns out the whole time the main character knew what the audience wasn't allowed to know until the end. This is the most annoying kind of storytelling, which only serves to mock the audience rather than create any tension. Then again, by the end the director of Blood-C had abandoned all pretense of giving a fuck and just served up a bunch of random gratuitous bloodshed for no apparent reason. If this sounds at all familiar, it should. This director seems to like mocking the audience, the son of a bitch.

Another is an example of a series which was less than the sum of it's parts. Combining equal parts Stephen King, John Saul, Corpse Party, Higurashi, Final Destination, and eyepatch moe should have resulted in something glorious. Instead, it ended up being kind of flat, and I'm not talking about Mei's DFC here. It was certainly well-animated and the art design was top-notch, and the show really took pains with it's nicely crafted soundscape. It's too bad the story ended up trainwrecking at the end after most of the series was spent setting up something that should have been quite awesome but decidedly wasn't.

^
It would've been even better if only Takashi Miike were to be directing the series, which means, too bad anime directors should be learning much from him and his works on how to pull off a proper horror/suspense show.

Anyways I feel I am in the minority here with my feelings for this series. While I found it enjoyable to watch week by week I also found it largely forgettable.

Indeed. I discussed it with my bf yesterday and I told him the massacre at the end of the series reminded me of an anime we watched last year... you know the one with the vampires in a secluded village. I couldnt remember the name and nor could my bf, we both had to google it: Shiki

Sadly, Another left a very similar aftertaste in my mouth and will fall into oblivion in no time.

Maybe the anime made the whole story around Misaki K˘tar˘, Mei's father, a lot more suspicious than it had to be.

Spoiler for novel:

In the novel it is revealed by Mei before she leaves town, that he is a wealthy industrialist and spends almost the whole year travelling around the world leaving his wife home alone (due to reasons we only later learn). He only comes home once a year to take his family on a vacation for a few weeks.

Also it is less the doll eye that has mystical powers

Spoiler for novel:

it is rather that the place where her eye was is the part of her body that was closest to death. Her power is also meant to be ambigious to the point that it is never fully provable if K˘ichi's decision to trust her on that was the correct one.

I don't want to sound overly sour, but the above only serves to further convince me that Another had been poorly adapted into anime. I strongly believe that every story must be able to stand on its own, regardless of its medium. That viewers are expected to "find answers" from the novel doesn't cut it with me at all. And if that is part of a deliberate cross-marketing plan to make me read the novel, then it makes me even angrier, because it smacks of cynical commercialism and I want no part in it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

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Originally Posted by Kirarakim

I also wish there could have been more development with Kouichi's relationship with his aunt. Although I do realize that might have made her status as the Another too obvious.

The above is one of the glaring flaws of the anime adaptation. From what I'm beginning to gather, now that I am safely able to read the spoilers littering the Internet, the "secret" of Kouichi's relationship with Reiko Mikami was revealed earlier in the manga.

That, I feel, is crucial for making readers/viewers care more about Kouichi's emotional connection to his aunt/surrogate mother. The way their relationship was treated in the anime (pretending it doesn't exist thus, in effect, making what should have been a strong bond completely non-existent; ah, the irony), I felt only a yawning hollowness when Kouichi bade farewell to Reiko before "killing" her, when I should have been emotionally crushed instead. It felt like a smart-alec "aha!" afterthought, rather than something that should have hit me like a tonne of bricks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by warita

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

Anyways I feel I am in the minority here with my feelings for this series. While I found it enjoyable to watch week by week I also found it largely forgettable.

Indeed. I discussed it with my bf yesterday and I told him the massacre at the end of the series reminded me of an anime we watched last year... you know the one with the vampires in a secluded village. I couldnt remember the name and nor could my bf, we both had to google it: Shiki

Sadly, Another left a very similar aftertaste in my mouth and will fall into oblivion in no time.

Even if we are a minority, we're likely to be part of quite a sizeable minority, judging by the buzz around the blogosphere. It's a real shame.

The comparison to Shiki is apt, unfortunately. I'd already registered my great disappointment in that series earlier in this sub-forum. I was hoping that Another would be very different. Certainly, in the beginning, it showed a lot of promise. It appeared to be quite clever and well-constructed, in terms of thematic and plot development. In the end, though, it just descended into the horror/slasher tropes that are the hallmark of entertaining but entirely forgettable popcorn summer flicks.

As I've said in a blog, I had been emotionally detached from the show since it "jumped the shark". The series had been immensely entertaining, and it's a great pity that it ended on such a cheesy note.